Virginia Walbot accepts some of the blame for remorselessly negative reviewers, and suggests a training program for graduate students and post docs that will deliver a fairer assessment of manuscripts.

A new literature-based yeast database documents over 33,000 biological interactions, manually curated from the primary literature, and provides an invaluable resource to benchmark high-throughput methods in the study of complex networks.

Commenting on a phylogeographic analysis in BMC Biology that supports a Middle Eastern origin of small dogs, Driscoll and Macdonald speculate on the implications of wolf domestication and size reduction occurring at a time of transition between hunter-gatherer and sedentary societies.

Rick Maizels discusses a recent paper in BMC Biology on wild mammals that lend support to the hygiene hypothesis, and explains why genetic variants that reduce parasite-induced immunosuppression are associated with an increase in allergic reactions.

Juan and Emerson discuss the reconstruction of the molecular phylogeny of a large Mediterranean cave-dwelling beetle clade recently presented in BMC Evolutionary Biology, and the implications for the evolutionary origin of the beetle ancestor.

In a special issue to celebrate the bicentennial of Darwin&apos;s birth, Robin Weiss reviews recent speculations on human prehistory based on louse phylogeny, and adds his own on the origins of pubic hair.

Chemotherapeutic agents are more toxic to cells of the central nervous system than to cancer cells when administered to mice and cultured cells, providing an explanation for adverse neurological effects of systemic chemotherapy.

The first comprehensive systems biology study on growth rate control in yeast integrates information from the transcriptome, proteome and metabolome to reveal how cell growth underlies key cellular and development processes.

Capuco and Akers review the biology of lactation and discuss a new report in Genome Biology that compares the bovine genome with six other mammalian genomes to study how lactation and its regulation evolved.

Pinaud heralds the publication of the zebra finch genome, reviewing some of the most exciting findings of this pioneering effort and explaining how this songbird model offers unique insights into auditory learning, singing behaviour and other biological phenomena.

The chemotherapy drug, 5-fluorouracil, causes delayed degeneration in the central nervous system of animals, a newly identified type of damage that helps explain the cognitive defects or `chemobrain` symptoms associated with cancer treatment.

Characterization of small-molecule agonists and antagonists of the Hedgehog signaling pathway reveals that these candidate therapeutics act at the level of the pathway activator Smoothened, which may normally be regulated by an endogenous small molecule.

Frank Slack and Samrat Kundu highlight a refinement of the antisense strategy used to inhibit miRNAs in C.elegans, published in Silence, with an adaptation that supports transmission through the germline, and combinatorial use to target several different miRNAs in developing tissues.

Final body size in the moth Manduca sexta can be predicted from the juvenile caterpillar by modeling three key growth measurements to reveal how growth rate, nutrition and temperature determine eventual body size.

The bodies of platyhelminth and acoel worms are continually renewed from large pools of somatic stem cells. Bely and Sikes discuss their consequent attractiveness for stem cell research, and how recent studies, including one in BMC Developmental Biology, reveal aspects of the cellular dynamics and molecular basis of stem-cell function in these animals.

Koonin and colleagues, comparing a forest of 7000 phylogenetic trees, discern vertical inheritance even at the earliest stages of prokaryotic evolution, despite horizontal gene transfer, but the branching order of the earliest radiations may never be resolved.

For the first time it is possible to image and quantify at nanometer resolution biological samples labeled with stable isotopes, using multi-isotope imaging mass spectrometry, applicable to all fields of biomedical research.

Stocker and colleagues identify and analyze a growth-promoting complex in Drosophila, formed between the putative transcription factor BunA, for which human homologs can functionally substitute, and the adaptor protein Madm.

Palmer discusses recent studies, including one in BMC Biology, suggesting that mouth bending in scale-eating cichlids cannot be explained by frequency dependent selection alone, but that the behavior of the fish may amplify mouth asymmetry during growth.

Mutations targeted to key functional areas of RNA polymerases can generate superactive enzymes that suggest how conformational changes in specialized domains of the enzyme contribute to the catalytic cycle.

In Drosophila, inhibitory interneurons are progressively recruited as olfactory sensory neurons are activated at increasing odor concentrations, allowing the flies to identify distinct odors at different intensities.

Yeast and C. elegans share a conserved cellular mechanism that counteracts the fatal consequences of oxidative stress by enabling the redirection of metabolic flux from glycolysis to the pentose phosphate pathway.

A metabolomic quest for universals in the control of lifespan recently reported in BMC Biology implicates branched-chain amino acid pools. Gallo and Riddle review the lessons from C.elegans in research on longevity, and discuss the implications of the metabolomic research.

Hayward and colleagues discuss the promise of fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based techniques to study the spatio-temporal subversion of host cell signaling by pathogens, reviewing the few existing examples of this, which include a recent paper in BMC Biology, to illustrate the power of an approach that has been surprisingly under-exploited to date.

Highlighting recent research in BMC Evolutionary Biology that analyzes the scent profiles of ring-tailed lemurs in relation to their genetic distance, Hurst and Benyon discuss recent progress and remaining challenges in deciphering how vertebrates recognise kin by their smell.

Tower and Arbeitman discuss two studies in BMC Evolutionary Biology showing that the genetic differences between male and female seed beetles and in fruit flies have a significant effect upon aging and life span.

Gardner, Bateman and Poole review the current knowledge of small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) and discuss two BMC Genomic papers reporting the identification of novel snoRNAs and the likelihood that there are many more out there.

Stem cell biology and new high throughput techniques are inspiring new advances in research on regeneration. Whited and Tabin discuss recent developments, including two recent reports in BMC Biology that may mean a reevaluation of the regenerative prospects for humans.

A C. elegans genetic-interaction network built by combining gene mutants and knockdowns is the largest animal network to date, revealing redundancy among functional modules and surprisingly little conservation of network connections compared to yeast.

Dawson and Hagen discuss our current underestimation of the ecological complexity of protist communities in the light of a recent paper in BMC Biology that reports an expanded map of microbial diversity using high throughput sequencing strategy.

Glial cells can promote the repair of damaged spinal cord, but experiments in rats show that while some promote functional recovery others cause abnormal growth and pain, depending on the growth factor used to cultivate them in culture.

Quantitative traits, such as human height and cholesterol levels, are controlled by large numbers of genes with small effects, and cannot be analyzed by Mendelian genetics. Trudy MacKay explains in Q&A format what is required to identify the many contributing genes for these traits.

Arthur Lander argues that the molecular definition of a stem cell is a mirage and 'stemness' is an emergent property of cells in their physiological context, so that the current concept is arguably an obstacle to research.

Small molecules that stabilize mutant proteins with high specificity can be used to treat protein misfolding and metabolic diseases: in a Q&A highlighting recent successes, Dagmar Ringe and Gregory Petsko explain how.

Peel discusses the merits of the flour beetle over the fruit fly as a new arthropod model organism and describes how a new mutagenesis screen published in BMC Biology increases the usefulness of this creature.

Specific detection of protein isoforms in whole cell lysates is now more efficient with the arrival of a label-free electronic sensing system consisting of immobilized peptide aptamers on individual gold electrodes at the micron scale.

Christopher Barratt and colleagues review our current knowledge of the human sperm cell and available treatments for male subfertility in the light of a recent paper in BMC Developmental Biology on the role of the annulus.

The development of the checkpoint concept was a landmark in the understanding of cell cycle control, but Alexey Khodjakov and Conly Rieder argue that it is widely misunderstood, to the detriment of progress in cell cycle research.

Monocytes are circulating cells that can differentiate into macrophages with either repair and maintenance or inflammatory properties. Martinez discusses recent papers, including one published in BMC Genomics, that help define these distinct properties and thus identify therapeutic targets.

Bilateral animals have selectively shed genes as they evolved from their hypothetical ancestor, Urbilateria. Miller and Ball review this genomic history and ask if a recent paper in BMC Evolutionary Biology points to an ancestral worm.

The multiple complex biological interactions in a yeast cell can be mapped in a simple graphical form, enhancing our understanding of the networks of interaction by which components of a cell influence one another.

Zallen and colleagues explain in Q&A format the complex process by which the cells of a tissue establish planar polarity, in which their spatial properties are coordinated, and how failures may be reflected in human developmental defects.

The THO complex is implicated in RNA export from the nucleus, but exactly how is not clear. Jimeno and Aguilera discuss a new report on the THOC5 subunit in BMC Biology that suggests a role in differentiation.

Important structures in developing mouse eyes originate from neural crest cells controlled by TGFbeta signals from the lens, providing insight into human conditions that results in glaucoma and blindness.

Major evolutionary change depends on changes in gene expression. Itay Tirosh and colleagues review recent research on the influence of promoter architecture and mutations in regulatory proteins on divergent expression patterns and suggest what is required for evolvability.

James Crow picks up the gauntlet thrown down by Mayr at the feet of JBS Haldane, and describes the essential contribution of mathematics to the understanding of evolution from genetic drift to molecular clocks.

Wharton and Marshall discuss studies in BMC Genomics that identify genes and proteins involved in protecting Antarctic nematodes during desiccation, a strategy they developed to survive in a harsh environment.

Hemozoin pigment, released during malarial infection, is now known to cause dendritic cell failure and subsequent host immunosupression, explaining why people with malaria become prone to infection and respond poorly to vaccines.

HIV causes immunodeficiency by deleting activated CD4 T lymphocytes, but paradoxically also causes general immune activation. Kassiotis and colleagues have mimicked this effect by using genetic engineering to delete activated T cells in mice, and show that in the mice it is due to loss of regulatory T cells.

Etienne-Manneville reviews the intimate link between cell polarity and cell proliferation in the light of a recent study in BMC Biology clarifying the polarity, proliferation and apoptotic pathways downstream of the tumour suppressor Scribble.

Lee and Wang discuss how the structural flexibility of the cancer drug imatinib (Gleevec) accounts for the drug's off-target promiscuity, illustrated by a structural study published in BMC Structural Biology.